Johnny on the Spot

Today I’d like to talk about my younger brother John, whose birthday is this month. He is definitely my best friend and greatest ally, the sharer of my earliest memories, my closest confidant and the person who most understands me with the least judgement and the greatest charity. I hope I pass away before he does, because a world without him would be bleak indeed.

I suppose his greatest attribute is his joy and humor, all the better because it is tempered with a sense of how fragile and precious such things are in a cold cruel world, where there is so much mockery to be made of the ironies and inconsistencies life. His wit has a way of piercing any pretension or self-pity and restoring good humor to what may seem to be a grim situation.

This humor manifested itself in his earliest years; I know he was drawing comics from the 2^nd grade on, and maybe even earlier. This skill further honed his story-telling ability, where he was always clever in introducing amusing and interesting twist complications, a talent much-prized in our childhood ‘playings’ and which prevented them from devolving into mere egotistical ramblings, sometimes blossoming them into full-blown ‘epics’.

Besides being an excellent co-conspirator and enthusiastic appreciator of others ‘discoveries’ (our family seldom comes across an interest that they do not want to share with ‘the collective’), John has made several areas his own: especially comics (graphic art), and I might cite comedians in general, especially of the Golden Age, like Charlie Chaplin or Laurel and Hardy. He was the original ‘monster kid’ par excellence in our family, with horror from Frankenstein to Fangoria being his special preserve. He is the greatest Beatles enthusiast among us, and his musical taste and findings have allowed me to branch out (in my own stunted way) into areas I would not have on my own. His appreciation for literature, from the science fantasy of Ray Bradbury to, say, the classic fiction of Leo Tolstoy, is wide-ranging and eclectic. He has a special sense of the comedy in horror and the horror in comedy, and feels the sorrowful tragedy that underlies it all without it letting it overwhelm him.

And beyond mere enthusiasms are his uncommon common heroics, his decency, and his kindness. Of us three older Babel boys, he is the one who managed (by greatest good fortune) to discover a wonderful wife, found a family, and shape a home. He labors diligently to provide for them all. He has helped support me through my darkest times. I have sometimes thought (in my vanity) that he is the Sam Gamgee to my Frodo Baggins. But let us not forget that Sam is the real hero of The Lord of the Rings. Frodo wouldn’t have gotten very far without Sam. Nor I without John.

Of us all, he has written some of the best poetry. He has appeared in several guises throughout much of my writing. He is the only reason I ever finished writing a novel, and why I have written as many short stories as I have. He is my ideal target audience, and he gets my meaning, sir.

I hope he will pardon me this all too brief summation of his life, and its emphasis on what it means to me, particularly. Volumes could be written on his meaning and impact on all who have known him. In fact, I know he will forgive me. He recognizes that, as with most of the characters in our family, one cannot easily summarize a biography in a few short paragraphs. But I have to say something, to give at least an impressionistic portrait of my brother and friend. And so to wish him a very happy birthday, and many more to come.